Over the life of "Drunk History," its host, director, and executive producer Derek Waters has sat through nearly 100 boozy narrations. Each one looks hilarious and fun on television, but are naturally filled with challenges while taping.

"I’ve figured out certain techniques," Waters told Business Insider. "If you’ve ever hung out with someone that drinks, you know that emotions can happen, attitudes can happen."

"Drunk History" returns on Tuesday for its third year on Comedy Central (five years overall if you count its Funny Or Die run). Each episode features three stories told by inebriated narrators and reenacted by performers. And, yes, the answer to the most-asked question about "Drunk History" is the narrators are really drunk.

The show is so fun to watch that a who's who of Hollywood's A-List have appeared on the series, including Jack Black, Connie Britton, Michael Cera, Courteney Cox, Laura Dern, John Lithgow, Jason Ritter, Winona Ryder, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson.

"We’re trying to make a history show, not a comedy show," Waters said. "And it just so happens that comedy comes out of the way we’re trying to tell the history."

But when BI points out the combination of the drunk narrators, the over-the-top costumes, and stylized reenactments, Waters admits, "OK, we're definitely going for comedy, too."

One narration session can take between four and six hours to shoot. And with the inherent hiccups that can occur, Waters has come up with some best practices when it comes to shooting the sessions.

1. Bring on people Waters has already tossed a few back with, so he knows what to expect."I’m very cautious of that," he said. "Most of the people on the show I drink with, so I know how they’re going to be. If I know someone who is really funny but has a problem, I don’t approach them. I just don’t mess with that."

2. Narrators are asked not to drink before the crew arrives."So you don’t get too drunk," Waters said. "I’m not trying to be like, ‘Look how drunk they are!’ I’m trying to tell history in a new way and not just because they’re, say, upside down talking."

Josh Hartnett as Clark Gable for the upcoming "Miami" episode of "Drunk History."

3. No one likes to drink alone."I share a drink with them to get them comfortable," the director said.

4. Everyone has their limit."There’s several stages of drunk," he explained. "and you have to make sure you’re not on the last one."

5. There's always another job for lightweights."I don’t want people to get sick," Waters said. "I don’t want people to fall. I also don’t want them to tell a regular story. They have to be a little slurred and a little messed up or we should just watch the history channel. So, no one is drinking for the first time. But if someone is like, ‘Yeah, I don’t drink that much, but I love the show.’ Then, ok, maybe they can be in the reenactment."

So, yes, the show can be more complicated than it looks on TV. And as it embarks on its third season, there's some proof that people are taking notice of the hard work. This year, it earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series.

"It feels like this little thing I did for fun, but the more I grew with it, the more I wanted to say I have a chance to say something right now," Waters said of the nom. "What do I want to say? Maybe, I can tell stories that teach people stuff. So, to have the Academy recognize that it's not just a comedy show, it's something new and different, I just take it as a really sweet compliment."

The third season of "Drunk History" debuts Tuesday at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.

Filming ‘Drunk History’ really is a drinking fest, but hopefully an educational oneLOS ANGELES — A third season of the highly unlikely, oddly lovable “Drunk History,” in which drunks tell stories from American history, begins this week on Comedy Central. Like a man slipping on a banana peel, its humorous mechanism is easily grasped once seen, but the effects are surprisingly complex and sophisticated.

The idea is simple, though words tend to fail it: A person, typically a comedian or comic writer, versed in a historical event, drinks to a point of serious inebriation and then tells the story; an edited recording of that performance becomes the soundtrack — both the narration and dialogue — for a full-on, costumed, lip-synced re-enactment. Three of these are packaged thematically into a half-hour to make an episode.

Derek Waters is the series’ creator and host — its alcoholic-spirit guide, if you will — and also a director and a member of its stock company, which is supplemented regularly by well-known names from comedy and beyond. The upcoming season includes appearances by Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Giancarlo Esposito, Michael McKean, and Henry Winkler. Sam Rockwell will play Bugsy Siegel opposite Dennis Quaid’s Lucky Luciano. Will Ferrell will play writer Roald Dahl, when he worked as a spy. Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer will play Harriet Tubman, when she did.

“People are always like, ‘Who’s the hardest person to work with?'” Waters tells the LA Times recently in his unprepossessing office downtown, in an hour stolen from post-production on a neighboring floor; a sign on his door read “I Have Seen Better Days.”

“No one,” he says, “because a hard person to work with would never say yes to this; it’s a whole day and no money.”

The idea was born one night in 2007, when after a few drinks, the actor Jake Johnson told Waters an unlikely story about the singer Otis Redding, “and I was just picturing Otis Redding having to come back to life, moving his lips to Jake’s words but looking at me and shaking his head; I don’t do drugs, so it wasn’t anything but having a weird imagination.”

That moment of inspiration eventually produced the first “Drunk History” short, made to show at the Upright Citizens Brigade, with Johnson as Aaron Burr and Michael Cera as Alexander Hamilton. Mark Gagliardi, who had been at Second City with Waters, provided the narration; Jeremy Konner, who still directs most episodes, ran the camera; and Waters “held the laptop to hit the audio over and over again” while the actors perfected their miming. (Konner will himself be a drunken narrator this season, for a segment on the California Aqueduct, with Tenacious D partners Jack Black and Kyle Gass as William Mulholland, who built it, and Frederick Eaton, who had the idea.)

The short was posted online, and in due course, under the flag of Funny or Die, became a web series, which became a TV series. And here we are, at the dawn of Season 3, which will be the longest season yet, with 13 episodes — that means 39 stories to tell, and 39 nights on the tiles.

At first glance and maybe a few subsequent glances as well, there is something about the whole enterprise that feels less than benign, as when a pledge is forced to drink to excess to join a fraternity, where he may then drink to excess of his own free will.

The aim of the show, Waters says, is neither to make fun of drunks nor to mock history; if anything, it is tender to the drunks and respectful of the history, which it wants to make new, and, in its potted way, real. Likewise, the point of the drinking is not so much that it adds mayhem — it does add a little mayhem — as that it strips artifice from the telling and lets emotion and enthusiasm in.

Waters uses comedians and comedy writers as his narrators, “not for the obvious reason of their being funny but because they understand a beginning, middle and end to a story.” And because it’s all filtered through a 2015 (altered) consciousness, it feels especially direct and contemporary — bringing history alive! — in a way that high-priced, highly detailed Hollywood period blockbusters often fail to do.

Waters is also the person the narrator narrates to, and, though he is usually a few drinks behind the speaker, he follows them dutifully into inebriation, one or two sheets to the wind, to their three.

“It sounds like a bad idea, says my doctor. But it allows them to be free and comfortable, like, ‘Hey, we’re doing this together.’ And especially when it’s someone who hasn’t done it before, if they’re struggling with the story, or they’re not drunk and they’re just telling a story and it’s boring, then I have to be like, ‘Let’s do a shot together.’ It’s a lot easier for that to go well than ‘You should get more drunk.’ ‘Wait, I’m not doing it right?’ I’m just going, ‘Let’s have another drink.’ But that’s why I won’t be able to do the show forever; because as cool as history is, I want to live.”

Certainly there are viewers who will find this a questionable, even an irresponsible, even an immoral sort of comedy. But it plays as curiously innocent.

Says Waters: “I think the secret is that I’m not trying to make a comedy show; I’m trying to make a history show, but because of how I’m doing it, people will laugh, and not from, ‘Oh, it was so funny, they were so drunk.’ I would hate it if someone were like, ‘That show’s great, they get so messed up.’ I hope that’s not what you take away from it.”

In fact, you take history away from it.

“That is the secret goal,” Waters says. “I want them to make the audience feel a little dumb. You don’t see it coming, this person’s in an altered state, I’m laughing at them, oooooh — they just told me something.”

Indeed, the stories are told with such confidence, even apart from the Dutch courage and over the hurdles of encroaching incoherence, that viewers might think each narrator must be independently expert in his or her subject. But they learn on the job, receiving a “research packet,” with a rough beginning, middle, end of the story, which they learn and retell sober to a “Drunk History” producer.

Waters stays out of the way at this point, he says, because “I want it to be real, when they talk to me it’s the first time I’m hearing it from them. And nothing makes a drunk person happier than when you say ‘no’ when they ask you, ‘Have you heard this story?'”

A session can last six hours to produce a six-minute soundtrack. There are breaks for food and sometimes for oxygen.

“The first hour and a half, two hours I just let them get all the jokes out, knowing none of it will be used; but it helps them, now they’re comfortable. Now let’s tell the story again, and let’s tell the story again, just keep going to get to the point where you’re not trying to be funny, you’re now trying to tell history in the condition that you’re in.”

What about the morning after?

“The next day is all apology emails,” Waters says. “Like, ‘I’m sorry I got drunk for your show.’ ‘That’s what you’re supposed to do.’ ‘I didn’t tell the story.’ ‘No, you did tell the story or we would still be filming, I promise.’ But there’s never been anyone telling me, ‘Never do that to me again.’ So I’m proud of that.”

Actor Clark Gable joins the Air Force during World War II, Ponce de Leon quarrels with Diego Columbus, and Griselda Blanco takes over the cocaine trade in Miami. Featuring Josh Hartnett, Maya Rudolph, David Koechner and Johnny Knoxville.

Comedy Central's Drunk History — a show that's the perfect marriage between education and inebriation — returns for its third season tonight at 10:30 pm. This episode finds itself in Miami, where Ponce de Leon searches for the New World, Griselda Blanco (AKA "The Black Widow") takes command of the Magic City's once-sizable cocaine trade, and screen legend Clark Gable joins the Army Air Corps during World War II.

Drunk History's Miami episode looks particularly funny as Johnny Knoxville plays Ponce de Leon and the always-hysterical Maya Rudolph takes on the role of Griselda Blanco. Less promising is Josh Hartnett as Clark Gable, but while Hartnett may not have the comic chops of Rudolph or physical commitment of Knoxville, he definitely has the look. If the preview is any indication, a Tuesday night spent in front of the TV set with some drunk PhDs waxing poetic about the 305 sounds like a good bet:Ссылка+ ВидеоAnd though there's certainly no need to be drunk while recounting Miami's weird and wonderful history (it's really intoxicating on its own), it certainly can't hurt. Assuming we're not mired in a history hangover, we'll have a recap for you Wednesday.

Drunk History airs on Comedy Central Tuesday, September 8, at 10:30 p.m.

Подождем 6-й сезон, посмотрим...Drunk History Season 6 Trailer Features Historical MadnessDrunk History Season 6 trailer features historical madness

Comedy Central has released a new trailer for Season 6 of Drunk History that features the wild cast, including the likes of Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings), Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld), Will Ferrell (Holmes and Watson), Vanessa Hudgens (Spring Breakers), and Jack MacBrayer (30 Rock) hamming it up as important real-life characters from history. Check out the trailer in the player below!

Per the report, the network also revealed more information on the cast, which includes the aforementioned Hudgens and Rachel Bilson (Jumper) as sisters Marge & Helen Callaghan reenacting the start of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League; Amanda Stenberg (The Hate U Give) portraying Elizabeth Eckford, one of the African American students to attend Little Rock Central High School in 1957; Allison Brie (The Lego Movie) and Sugar Lyn Beard (Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates) as Thea Slyer and Edith Windsor, a married couple who fought for LGBTQ rights; Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor) as Joachim Neuman, who escaped to West Germany with his girlfriend through “Tunnel 57”; and Q’orianka Kilcher (The New World) as LaNada Means, a UC Berkley leader who organized the Third World Strike.

Comedy Central is ready to hit the bottle once again. The network just released a new trailer for season six of Drunk History.

The new season of the comedy reenactment series will feature guest appearances by “Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Shelley, Elijah Wood as Percy Shelley, Seth Rogen as Dr. Frankenstein, Will Ferrell as Frankenstein’s Monster and Jack McBrayer as Lord Byron.”

Season six of Drunk History premieres on Comedy Central on January 15th at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

Drunk History today shared its first-look trailer for season six, which premieres Tuesday, January 15 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central. The premiere episode is devoted to a parody of “Are You Afraid of the Dark” called “Are You Afraid of the Drunk.” The episode stars Evan Rachel Wood as Mary Shelley, Elijah Wood as Percy Shelley, Seth Rogen as Dr. Frankenstein, Will Ferrell as Frankenstein’s Monster and Jack McBrayer as Lord Byron. Rich Fulcher narrated the Frankenstein themed episode. Additional trailer highlights from the new, 14-episode season include:

· Vanessa Hudgens and Rachel Bilson as sisters Marge & Helen Callaghan knocking it out of the park in their reenactment of the start of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

· Amandla Stenberg as Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine African American students who were the first to attend Little Rock Central High School in 1957, also known as the Little Rock Nine.

· Alison Brie & Sugar Lyn Beard as Thea Spyer and Edith Windsor, the married couple who fought for LGBTQ rights. After Spyer’s passing, Edith challenged the Defense of Marriage Act and won.

· Josh Hartnett as Joachim Neumann who rescued his girlfriend and escaped to West Germany through the “Tunnel 57″ under the Berlin Wall in 1964.

· Q’orianka Kilcher as LaNada Means, a student leader at UC Berkeley who organized the Third World Strike, which ultimately led to the development of the Ethnic Studies Program.

Comedy Central is riding ratings momentum into the New Year, with 2018 ranking as the network’s best year with Women 18-49 since 2014. Comedy Central registered more growth in the demo than any other non-sports network this year. Additionally, Comedy Central remains the No. 1 full day entertainment network on cable with millennial men. Drunk History is the first of four notable January launches for Comedy Central. Critically-acclaimed Corporate premieres its second season following Drunk History on January 15. Broad City returns for an epic final season on January 24, followed by the series premiere of scripted comedy The Other Two.”